epicene have soft voices and ingratiating manners, and are bold enough
to make a direct appeal to the heart and emotions; they are
considered the very cream of London society.
These admirers and supporters praised and defended Oscar Wilde from
the beginning with the persistence and courage of men who if they
don't hang together are likely to hang separately. After his trial and
condemnation _The Daily Telegraph_ spoke with contempt of these
"decadents" and "aesthetes" who, it asserted, "could be numbered in
London society on the fingers of one hand"; but even _The Daily
Telegraph_ must have known that in the "smart set" alone there are
hundreds of these acolytes whose intellectual and artistic culture
gives them an importance out of all proportion to their number. It was
the passionate support of these men in the first place which made
Oscar Wilde notorious and successful.
This fact may well give pause to the thoughtful reader. In the middle
ages, when birth and position had a disproportionate power in life,
the Catholic Church supplied a certain democratic corrective to the
inequality of social conditions. It was a sort of "Jacob's Ladder"
leading from the lowest strata of society to the very heavens and
offering to ingenuous, youthful talent a career of infinite hope and
unlimited ambition. This great power of the Roman Church in the
middle-ages may well be compared to the influence exerted by those
whom I have designated as Oscar Wilde's fuglemen in the England of
today. The easiest way to success in London society is to be notorious
in this sense. Whatever career one may have chosen, however humble
one's birth, one is then certain of finding distinguished friends and
impassioned advocates. If you happen to be in the army and unmarried,
you are declared to be a strategist like Caesar, or an organizer like
Moltke; if you are an artist, instead of having your faults proclaimed
and your failings scourged, your qualifications are eulogised and you
find yourself compared to Michel Angelo or Titian! I would not
|